


Doing Something

by thealpacalypse



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, I Believe in Sherlock Holmes, I surely did, M/M, Meta, Post Reichenbach, feel free to read hinted Johnlock into this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 12:51:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealpacalypse/pseuds/thealpacalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock's death John doesn't do much. Why would he, when everything good in his life is suddenly gone? But then he realises that he needs to do something to keep his sanity - and that's when fate brings him a piece of paper...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doing Something

**Author's Note:**

> It's meta time, yay! :D  
> Do you guys remember the #believeinsherlock movement that suddenly exploded after the airing of Reichenbach? It was huge on tumblr and even here in Germany we had fun spreading posters and flyers all over Nuremberg.  
> I dedicate this fic to everyone awesome who took part in the #IbelieveinSherlockHolmes madness and I would love to read your stories about that in the comments! :D
> 
> And now: Have fun with my fic! :)
> 
> Also, thanks to my lovely beta **[Mary](http://randomlyfandom.tumblr.com/)**.

**Doing Something**   
  


In the first few weeks John does absolutely nothing.  
Or else – he doesn’t do much.  
He doesn’t talk much.  
He doesn’t eat much.  
He doesn’t sleep much.  
He doesn’t drink much more than he usually drinks, and he doesn’t cry very much, mostly because he feels so numb.

Then one day Mrs. Hudson yells at him, yells that he should move his arse to the grocery store and afterwards help her clean the flat. And by cleaning she means putting Sherlock’s stuff in boxes.  
John can’t.  
Instead he cries and then he puts his own stuff in boxes and moves out of Baker Street, because he can’t stand the sight of this place any more, which used to be Sherlock’s and his home.

At first everything gets worse after that.  
But then with time it gets better.  
John gets a job in a small hospital out of town where nobody knows him.  
He learns to ignore the pain that sometimes shoots through his leg suddenly.  
He also learns to ignore the papers, mainly the rainbow press, which still writes the ugliest things about Sherlock.  
They’re stupid and John knows that they’re terribly wrong, but still it hurts knowing that almost everybody believes that Sherlock Holmes had been a fraud and a psychopathic maniac. 

Again a few weeks pass before John returns to 221B to visit Mrs. Hudson and again he gets yelled at by her for being such a disloyal prat.  
But that’s not the part of this visit that doesn’t let him sleep that night.  
No, what keeps him awake is a piece of paper hanging in the fence in front of 221B Baker Street. John noticed it when he left the place in the evening and at first he thought it was rubbish and he wanted to rip it off and toss it in a bin.  
But then he read the words and saw the picture.  
It’s the picture of Sherlock everyone knows, the one with the deerstalker, and on top of the sheet there are five simple, big, black words:

I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES.

John doesn’t know what to make of it.  
He’s heard so much shit about Sherlock since that one day and it has always felt like he and Mrs. Hudson (and maybe Molly and Greg Lestrade) have been the only ones who still were on Sherlock’s side (John doesn’t know about the last two ones for sure, he hasn’t seen them ever since that day).  
But there, at the fence in front of 221 B, is the proof that at least one more person doesn’t believe that Sherlock is guilty of all the things he’s been accused for over the last weeks and months.  
John thinks this thought is somehow comforting.

The next day John sits in an underground to Piccadilly Circus because he needs new shirts for the upcoming summer. And not far away from him there sit three girls with flyers in their hands, and most of the time they peep over to him and whisper at each other.  
After a while one of them comes over. She can’t be more than seventeen, smiles at him widely and asks: “You’re John Watson, right?”  
But it’s not an actual question, the girl already knows the answer and sits down next to him, and John is confused, but he nods.  
“Me and my friends…”, she says and gestures over to the other girls, “are huge fans of your blog. About Sherlock Holmes. I just wanted to say that… we’re very sorry for your loss. And we want you to know that we don’t believe in the lies spread by the newspapers and television.  
The way you wrote about him… about Sherlock Holmes, I mean, we don’t believe he is guilty of anything. Actually-“ and she hands him over one of her flyers, “we’re here to spread the word. We want to talk to the people. Tell them the truth.”

John stares wordlessly at the piece of paper in his hands. Again there’s a press photo of Sherlock, along with a short text about how Richard Brook isn’t real and Jim Moriarty is the one who should be blamed for everything, and not Sherlock Holmes.  
“So you were the ones who put the flyer on Baker Street”, he finally says.  
The girl looks at him and seems a little confused. “Oh no, that wasn’t us. You know, we’re not the only ones. On the internet there’s a whole movement for Sherlock, people who read your blog, people who protest against the lies told by the media. Here…” She pulls a pen out of her pocket and writes down a web address on his flyer.  
“There you can find us. There’s over a hundred people there, not only from London, but from the whole country. Maybe…”, she hesitates for a moment, “maybe you can join us. You know, we don’t get much attention yet, but maybe if you become a part of the movement, people will start to listen. Maybe we can even get a few interviews or something, or even better, maybe the police will finally start to look into things more deeply.”

She smiles at him again, waiting for an answer.  
But John is just totally startled. “I… think about it.”  
“Right”, the girl replies and she seems disappointed. “You can contact me any time. Just search for me at the website. I’m sherlocked dot Linda.”  
And then she turns around and leaves, and at the next station she and her friends get out.  
John stays back, completely baffled.

When he’s finally at Piccadilly Circus, John has forgotten what he wanted to do there.  
Instead he stops the next cab (he’s never taken a cab since the funeral) and he goes directly to Scotland Yard to pay Greg Lestrade a visit.  
Lestrade sits in his chair at his desk, drinking coffee and ponderingly looking down at some papers.  
“Do you believe that Sherlock Holmes was a psychopath killer?” John asks before he even fully enters the room.  
Lestrade looks up and stares at him. “John.” His voice sounds surprised.  
“Do you believe that?” John simply repeats and sits down on the chair in opposite of Lestrade. 

Lestrade sighs.  
“So those people found you, too” he replies.  
He pulls the highest drawer of his desk open and hands John a whole bunch of flyers, sheets and even buttons.  
“They come here about once or twice a week and tell me that they deduced a sure-fire way to prove that Sherlock is innocent.”  
Lestrade sighs again and leans back in his chair.  
“John. These people trust a man they’ve only ever known from descriptions of a blog. And every single day I feel so guilty for doubting him even the tiniest bit.”  
Suddenly John’s chest feels so light and warm that he feels the urge to hug Greg – which is kind of strange considering the fact that John has started to be repulsed by physical contact a few months ago, when everything had happened.

He doesn’t do anything like hugging, he just smiles.  
“This is good, right?” he says. “We can clear Sherlock’s name, post mortem. That’s the least we can do for him after everything.”  
Lestrade groans and drives his fingers through his hair.  
“I already would have if I could. But I can’t. I’ve looked it over many times, there’s no way to prove that Moriarty invented Brook. And without that, without Moriarty, we have nothing. We don’t even know if he’s still alive, every search for him has been fruitless. I’m sorry, John. I tried, I really did.”  
The lightness in John’s chest is already gone again before Lestrade is even done talking.  
“Yes”, John says calmly. “Alright. You tried and you couldn’t. Then I guess it’s my turn now.”  
And with this he gets up from his chair, nods and leaves.

John leaves Linda a message on the website she gave him.  
She replies only a few hours later, tells him she’s happy to hear from him and that she’s just back from seven hours of spreading flyers over the entire city. And she asks if he wants to participate in a flash mob they have planned for the upcoming weekend.  
John says yes.

It’s unbelievable how simply John fits into his new role at the movement.  
Over the last few months he has done everything to remain invisible, to keep the press away from him so that they would stop writing crap about Sherlock one day and that people hopefully would at least forget.  
But now this has changed.  
He gives countless interviews.  
At first he reads about himself in the papers that  
a. he probably is a psychopath too, or why else would he still hold on to Sherlock Holmes?  
b. he must be mentally ill, probably something like Stockholm Syndrome.  
c. he’s simply one more victim of the criminal mastermind Sherlock Holmes, who has tricked him into believing in him over the boundaries of his death away.

John ignores the amount of bullshit in each of those assumptions and carries on.  
Because sometimes, at first just once or twice, there are other articles.  
Articles with headlines like “Can John Watson be right? 5 reasons why Sherlock Holmes is probably innocent”.  
And that’s what keeps John moving.

The movement explodes.  
They get from a hundred members on the website to over thousand, two thousand, three, four, five thousand, and it doesn’t stop.  
Lestrade makes an official statement that he himself is one hundred per cent sure that Sherlock Holmes was innocent, and two days later there’s another guy sitting in Lestrade’s old office and Lestrade gets transferred to the traffic offence division. Now everything the police department says about the case of Sherlock Holmes is “no comment”, but Lestrade has made a big difference.  
Now the press takes them seriously, now they have the voice of righteousness on their side. 

And still John keeps on going.  
He doesn’t exactly know why.  
Sherlock is dead almost three years now and his name is almost completely cleared, but John doesn’t want to stop, because this somehow keeps him sane, keeps him alive.  
He wants to give the greatest man he has ever known complete justice, because if he stops he is going to fall apart again and he can’t do that, not right now when he’s so _close_.

They don’t need to spread flyers and pamphlets anymore, because now everyone knows their concern. There are still interviews and conferences, even though the media isn’t as interested in the case as it has been before, because everything is almost clear now and also there are new, more interesting cases.  
It doesn’t matter to John.  
All that matters is that he doesn’t stop.  
That he keeps _doing something_.

What does he do on that one day he’ll never forget? It’s simple, every day habit.  
He meets Linda in a café like he does almost every week, to discuss the latest developments and news about the movement and afterwards he gets on his way to 221B to visit Mrs. Hudson and he thinks about if maybe he can talk her into letting him move back in for maybe half the price – he wants to live there again, but he can’t afford it in the long run. 

Deeply in thoughts he bumps into an old man who smells of homelessness and cheap whiskey.  
“Sorry”, the old man mumbles, and John flinches just for a second, because the voice of this man is almost as deep as Sherlock’s. But John’s shock is almost gone before he even realises it, because this happens all the time: People who have hair similar to Sherlock’s, who have the same scarf or coat, people who just remind him in some way of Sherlock.  
John has almost forgotten about it when he reaches 221B, but when he steps in, the old man is right behind him and sneaks in before John has the opportunity to close the door.  
John already thinks about what to say to that guy, maybe that this isn’t an open place for homeless people and that he would friendly request for the man to find another place.  
But then he looks at the man, really looks at him for the first time and even beyond the many layers of dirt on the man’s face he recognises the perky smile of Sherlock Holmes.

At first he thinks that somewhere along the way maybe he drifted into sleep and that this is a dream.  
“Hello John”, says the man, and now there’s no more doubt: This is really Sherlock.  
John feels like someone kneed him in the guts and he desperately gasps for air. Tears flood his eyes almost instantly and the uncountable amount of thoughts that shoot through his head is so overwhelming that everything just feels like static in there.  
Without even planning on doing it, he suddenly puts a hand on Sherlock’s cheek, the other hand on his shoulder. He has to _feel_ that Sherlock is real, that he really is there, standing in front of him.  
And when John indeed feels rough fabric and cold skin under his fingertips, he somehow gets it.  
That Sherlock Holmes is standing in the hall of Baker Street with him, for whatever reason.

There are questions, oh so many questions in John’s head, like _‘How?’_ and _‘Why?’_ and _‘Why now?’_ , and there’s a flood of relief and disbelief and affection, but at the same time there’s so much anger for what Sherlock has done to him.  
So he throws his arms around Sherlock and pulls him so tight it surely has to crush Sherlock’s ribs and he buries his face in Sherlock’s neck and cries like a baby, and he whimpers “Sherlock, you fucker” again and again.

John is really relieved when Mrs. Hudson nearly gets a heart attack when Sherlock is standing in her kitchen so suddenly – John has been worried that Mrs. Hudson might have known that Sherlock was still alive, and if that had been the case, John probably had do kill her for not telling him. Like John has to kill Molly and Mycroft, who both have never said a word and instead watched him suffer.  
(John is also pretty sure that he is going to kill Sherlock for dying and not telling him that he was still alive after that.)

When John finally has asked all the questions that he wanted to ask _(”How did you do it? How did you fool me? Where have you been? Why did you jump? Why couldn’t you tell me? Why the fuck let me suffer for three fucking years?”_ ) and Sherlock calmly has given every answer he can give, they sit there in silence at Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen table and sip some tee.  
John has a hard time keeping his hands to himself, because he still has the incredibly huge urge to either touch Sherlock or slap him, but he somehow manages. Instead he keeps his eyes fixed on Sherlock and never lets go for one second.  
Sherlock meanwhile lets his gaze fly around the room until it gets stuck at a pile of pamphlets over at a cupboard.  
He smiles. “I have been told you’ve done a lot for my reputation. It was not necessary, you know, with me owning a tape of Moriarty confessing everything.”  
John growls and again the urge to punch Sherlock gets almost too intense. “Normally you should say ‘thanks’ and let it be.”  
Sherlock stays silent for a few seconds, but then he nods and says: “It was a kind thing to do of you. Thank you, John.”  
He smiles again, and this time John smiles back.

Before the day is over, Sherlock and John have already signed the contracts to 221B again, so when they’re sitting in the living room of the flat, each one in their own chair, it’s already _their_ flat again. Probably always has been, because no one else ever moved in here in the last three years. Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t let that happen.  
So they’re sitting at the fireplace and staring into the crackling flames, and John asks tentatively: “So… what do we do now?”  
Sherlock just shrugs. It’s hard to imagine, but probably for the first time in his life he doesn’t have a plan.  
But it doesn’t matter, because if John has learned something over the last years it’s that there is always something to do. 

Probably they have to tell the world that Sherlock Holmes is back amongst the living, but they’re in no hurry, they don’t have to do that right now.  
Now they just sit here and watch the fire and don’t talk, and maybe a little later Sherlock will bring his violin up from the basement where Mrs. Hudson put everything of Sherlock’s stuff because she couldn’t throw it away, and then Sherlock will play a few nice melodies, until John falls asleep in his chair.  
Or maybe they’ll just do nothing.

Yes, John likes that idea.

Because honestly: He has done enough for now.


End file.
